«The Special One»...

"Please don't call me arrogant, but I'm European champion and I think I'm a special one", he said…
Nice, huh?

José Mourinho [ʒu'zɛ mo'ɾiɲu] – José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix – was born on January, 26.th 1963 in Setúbal and is the current manager of Premier League club Chelsea, London.



He is considered to be one of the best coaches in Europe, having won four consecutive league titles and also the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup with F.C. Porto.

Mourinho's playing career consisted of a few generally unsuccessful spells at small clubs, and his clear aptitude is his impressive managing and organisational ability. He has a degree in Physical Education, specialising in sports methodology, and worked as a high school coach.

After low-key backroom jobs at Estrela da Amadora and his hometown club Vitória de Setúbal in the early 1990s, Mourinho soon earned the nickname "tradutor" – translator –, when he worked with Sir Bobby Robson as his interpreter at both Sporting Lisbon and then F.C. Porto.

Mourinho's undoubted confidence and personality helped him get beyond his original role, as he began to participate actively in coaching sessions and management meetings.

He has publicly stated that he wishes to run the Portuguese national team at some point in his career. At the match that gave him his second title with Chelsea, Mourinho wore a Portugal scarf and said at the press conference:


"It means I am Portuguese. I wouldn't put on the scarf of another country. I can smell, feel in my country, there are still a few rats waiting to celebrate my mistakes. But when I think of the other 10.5 million Portuguese working all over the world (!) I know what I mean to them. I know they are proud of what I am doing."

However, there is at least one aspect of his meteoric, solar career, which he's definitely not the best in the world at: he's not the foreigner who's best at speaking English.

Whenever I get to listen to his statements – and rantings – at press conferences I cannot help but smile in a self-confident condescending way… Yes, sinful, I know… But so much bravado, so much machismo, so much closed-up faces, so much deadly fixed eyes, in short, so much southern European irreverence awkwardly put into Shakespeare's language do not come my way at all. Then again, I've never been much into football either… One thing follows the other, I guess…

Some of his bombastic sentences have already made me burst into laughter and brought tears to my eyes quite some times, so funny he can truly be! He's one of those guys who wouldn't ever mimic the British R. P. accent for anything in this world for deep inside he considers it as not being mannish enough… Intelligent, huh? Just by the way, I had quite a hard time to find out these smiling faced photos… Most of the time he looks as if "everyone owed him money and no one was paying him back" (Portuguese proverb depicting a solemn, irritated face).


So he willingly and determinedly keeps on speaking English with that strong Portuguese prosody (that sounds so dreadful in English!) and that ever so poor syntax, as if he had just learned it from a 'Teach Yourself' book and were not living in England at all.

For two consecutive years – 2004 and 2005 –, Mourinho was named the world's best football coach by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics.
No doubts about this either! And you?...

RIC (with some help from Wikipedia)